In Search Of Excellence - Kelly Hansen: The Bumpy Road Of Musical Beginnings | E73

Starting point is 00:00:00 So my dad would do these things like, I'm backtracking for a second here, but he did this thing where he made platinum record plaques with my name on it. And he would say something like, this could be your record labels next platinum album. Genius. That's genius. We opened for Cheap Trick and Gary Moore and Iron Maiden. I saw this and recognized this and I said, I have two choices. I can just change my style and do something that's not me and just pretend. Or I said, music is cyclical and there will be a place for my voice again. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist,

Starting point is 00:00:59 and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in our lives. My guest today is Kelly Hanson, the lead singer of the legendary rock band Foreigner, which has had five platinum records and has sold more than 80 million records. Kelly, welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thanks for being here today. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. I'll start my podcast with our family because from the moment we were born, our family helped shape our personalities, our values, and the preparation for our future. You were born in Hawthorne, California, and you grew up in Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach,

Starting point is 00:01:34 in the area of Los Angeles. Can you tell us about your parents growing up and Hermosa Beach? Can you tell us about your parents growing up and Ramsey Lewis and listening to pop music on your mom's GTO as you two are riding in her car? to visit with friends, you would often see them carrying albums under their arm of their personal choice in music. And I remember my parents going out and doing that. And Ramsey Lewis Live at the Bohemian Caverns was one of those albums. And I grew to really like that album. There's a great stand-up bass solo in there and in with the in crowd. And that was really great. But I do have a vivid picture of them walking out of the house with albums under their arm because they'd go over and everyone would put their own records on.

Starting point is 00:02:50 And while they're having conversation or cocktails, that would be the music in the background as opposed to putting on the fm radio or whatever um it was just that was your your custom playlist was your albums under your arm um and uh my mom uh with the gto convertible gto awesome car i don't think she even knew what she had when she had it and um but she was my mom had one by the way oh really well and you know what my dad's name is randall i forgot to tell you that that's pretty cool not many people named randall um they're not right and uh she always had the commercial pop radio station on in the car always so whenever we were going around doing errands or whatever that was always in my ear all the time. And how did the how did the rock station or the pop station influence you? Which did you like more, the jazz, Ramsey Lewis, or did you like the pop, whatever was popular at the time?

Starting point is 00:03:53 Where was your head at the time I associated singing with being a singer in front and a band in back. And they weren't necessarily a group together. It was like a single artist backed by a band or an orchestra or whatever like that. And it wasn't until much later that I realized when I, you know, heard Led Zeppelin and, uh, and the Stones, I was like, oh, there, this is a group. It's not Frank Sinatra out front or Dinah Washington, you know, out front and this collection of faceless people behind them. So it took me a while to to understand that concept. And I think that's different for a singer than it is for a musician. You were you were in the choir at school. Is that where your interest in singing first developed? And then when you talk about Zeppelin and the Stones, we're talking about Robert Plant and Mick.

Starting point is 00:04:42 Were they your idols and who you wanted to be well uh as far as the school choir goes it was part of the normal curriculum to be to take a choir class and one of the reasons that you can talk about later on why we do our choir participation stuff is is connected to that um so it wasn't really something I was seeking out. It was just part of one of the classes that I had to take was choir. And I still remember to this day, the Indian rain dance that we called it back then. That would be, you know, the indigenous or Native American rain dance song that people would sing to try to make it rain for the crops. And, and I have no idea whether it's real or not, but that's what they told us it was. And, um, I think for me, performance wise early on, there was, there was James Brown. There was, there was Rod Stewart. There was, um, there was Mick Jagger. Um,

Starting point is 00:05:40 Robert Plant was later on in my musical understanding because I wasn't into heavy groups because I was always listening to pop commercial radio. But I think performance wise, it was around that kind of performer that I spoke of that really kind of said to myself, oh, that's how you entertain an audience. Billy Joel had a music teacher when he was 14 years old that said, this is what you should do in life. And it inspired him and really prompted him to go out and be a musician and gave him the confidence. When you were in your choir class, was it like it is today where the teachers pick you out because you have the best voice and you sing at the graduations and the events and the recitals?

Starting point is 00:06:28 Or were you just a regular member of the choir and at that point were nothing, quote unquote, special compared to the rest of your classmates? I think I had a short solo section in one of the songs. I can't quite recall. I don't think that I was exceptional in any way at the time. I had a high voice. So I remember being in the kind of tenor or soprano part of the choir. I do remember that. You discovered that you could sing almost by accident. Can you tell us how you were at the beach one day with some family friends and one of the sons had a guitar with him and was a guitarist what

Starting point is 00:07:11 happened next this we had two families that were friends and both families had children and one was uh an older guy and, he carried his guitar everywhere with him. So we were at the beach one day and of course he has a guitar with him. And we were just sitting there and he said, well, you know, why don't we, why don't we sing a couple songs? You know? And so we sang a couple of things and he, he invited me to sing with his band. And then a couple of months later I was, I was the lead singer of the band.

Starting point is 00:07:43 And although there was a lot of growing pains, like I didn't know how to use my voice and every every show, my voice, but at that time it was late in my high school, uh, years and I was starting to have like a mental panic attack about what am I going to do for my future? I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn't great academically. Um, I felt that I was smart. Um, and I had had, you know, I had a job in a Mexican restaurant and that kind of thing, but I, that's obviously not what I was thinking of as far as a career to be a dishwasher. So, um, all those, there's nothing wrong with that.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Um, but when I started singing and started getting the response from the fans and I started getting some money, some getting paid to, to perform, I kind of said, well, this is something I seem to be, I seem to have at least some affinity for. I enjoy doing it. I seem to have the ability to do it. So I fell in it, into it accidentally, really. That's, I, it wasn't like this passionate pursuit that, that got me into singing or into the music business. So how old were you when you actually formed that band? What was it called? And what was your first gig like?

Starting point is 00:09:09 You hear so many stories about these musicians starting out. We talked about Led Zeppelin, all these bands play at the Troubadour. They seem to all have to go through there. But even way before that in high school, what kind of gigs were you getting? What was the first one? And when did you start getting paid? What was the feeling where you said, oh my God, I actually got paid for singing tonight? Yeah. I don't remember that feeling, but the first gig I played was at a, they call it, it was a co-rec center, like a recreation center. There was a park that was basically a building in

Starting point is 00:09:38 a park that could be used for different public functions. And so the park services would have like a teen dance night and they would hire a band and we would do cover songs and that was our and it was playing to like 12 year olds and 13 year olds whatever and i was about 17 i think and um um, so I, we did, uh, we did, we played, uh, junior highs, high schools, high school dances. I played my own high school and, uh, at Mira Costa high school in Manhattan beach. And, um, uh, we came back to the dressing room after the show and all of our stuff had been stolen by my own schoolmates. Uh, that doesn't give you any kind of weirdness in your head, does it? Um, no, but we, I mean, we, we eventually ended up playing all over Southern California. Uh, we, we played a military base. I think it was in,

Starting point is 00:10:41 um, in the Yuma, Arizona, Yuma. And this is still while you're in Yuma, Arizona. Yuma. And this is still while you're in high school. You're still in high school. I took the GED to get out of high school early because I was gating. So I took the tests and it's a pass or fail kind of thing. It takes three or four hours. And so I passed apparently. And because we were doing gigs and you'd be up till two or three at night,

Starting point is 00:11:07 either finishing the gig or traveling home from a gig this far away. But I remember I was talking about this gig. We had this military base and we get there and we start setting up. And it's like at a non-commissioned officer's party. People are having dinner. And I'm looking around, everybody's in these dress uniforms and with their wives in gowns. And I had a funny feeling about that because I knew what kind of music we did. Come to find out that we were a top 40 band, but they thought we were

Starting point is 00:11:38 a band that did songs from the 40s. So we did Roll roll out the barrel a lot that night. You mentioned you didn't graduate from high school. You got a GED. So many musicians, their passion starts when they're in their teen years, their high school years, and they have a decision to make. Do I go to college or don't I go to college? And so few musicians actually make it professionally where they can earn a living. Talent often doesn't have a single thing to do with it. There's a lot of other things, as you know, and we can go into that later in the show today. But what's your advice to those listening today who are thinking to themselves,

Starting point is 00:12:20 hey, I'm in high school. Do I really need to go to college? And what would you be telling your best friend's kids? Or if you decide to have kids of your own, what's your advice to them? Should they go to college or should they pursue their dreams and go try to be a musician and make a living at it? Well, I would prefer to relate my story, which was college was probably not an option for me. We didn't have that kind of money. And I had no idea what I wanted to pursue. And I happened to fall into something that started working for me. So, but I do know that if you choose to pursue music as a career, you better really, really want it because

Starting point is 00:13:08 you're going to sacrifice immensely in many areas of your life. And if you're fortunate, you won't be a huge pop or rock star when you're too young. because it's very difficult at a super young age to be able to handle the weight of fame and and or money bless you and uh thank you um and so uh i mean i had a modicum of success when I joined my band Hurricane. But before that, there was a lot of struggle. And I learned some really big lessons with Hurricane. And I now say to myself, I think I was really fortunate that the band wasn't bigger than it was at the time. Because I'm not sure how I would have developed as a person with, um, with that

Starting point is 00:14:06 environment around me. So, but if you really want to do it, be prepared to sacrifice. And that means you don't get to have all the nicest clothes and shoes and jewelry and all those things that young people seem to want. Um, you're going to have to work your ass off and you're going to have to pay your dues. And, uh, and that's how my era did it. There are some obviously newer ways to do things that include some shortcuts or not having to work as hard. There are some TV shows that you can become a star overnight, you know, on a, on a contest show. But the odds are still slim. I think it's harder to start a band now than it was back in the day. I think it's harder to get attention when there is a glut of music and artists out there

Starting point is 00:14:57 who some of them would never have gotten a chance to even have a band back in the day because the only bands that really got record deals were bands that were really good. And now anyone can make a record in their bedroom and doesn't mean they should. So think about those things. And I think it's really good to follow your passions and understand what you want and know what you want, because that's what it's going to take. And I also had parents who were very supportive of me. They said, whatever you want to do, we're behind you 100%. And that was very helpful to me

Starting point is 00:15:35 because I didn't have someone trying to talk me out of it and get a regular job and all that kind of stuff. Are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend, colleague, or loved one? Bliss Beaches makes the perfect gift. This best-selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by Randall Kaplan features stunning drone photography from exotic beach locations around the world. It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office,

Starting point is 00:15:57 and a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner. Bliss Beaches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five-star rating. Get your next amazing gift and order a copy of Bliss Beaches by clicking the link in our show notes. Could you have been successful if your parents had said, I really don't want you to do this, go get a regular job, a nine-to-five job, or go be a doctor or lawyer or whatever?

Starting point is 00:16:20 It's hard for me to answer a hypothetical, but I can't help but think if I didn't have their support that my beginning would be the same as it was. There's something in all of us about our parents believing in us. And I've said this on a bunch of my previous shows. I think someone once told me the four most powerful words in the human language are, I believe in you. And there's nothing like your parents saying that to you and giving you the confidence to go out and do and be whatever you want to be. I think that that's partially true. I think sometimes it takes a while for that phrase to circulate around your mind and your experience. And then sometime down the road, you understand how important that was for you. Because I think a lot of times, what is said to you when you know everything and you're

Starting point is 00:17:13 no more than everyone and you really don't understand anything that an adult says or some things go in one ear and out the other. for me um it took a little while for me to really grasp how much that meant we're going to come back to the sex drugs and rock and roll in a little bit but walk us through the evolution of your i mean that's what everyone loves to hear about right what was it really like but we're going to get there right what was the evolution for you? We'll go up through Hurricane and tell us kind of what you did next. You're in this band from high school and then there's always something that changes. And it's very rare. You got Van Halen, right? They stay together forever. They finally had to change later on in life with Dave Lee Roth.

Starting point is 00:18:00 We'll talk about Foreigner as well and the change and bringing you in. But what's the evolution here in terms of you're in this high school band, you're touring, you're at Air Force bases. People confuse what you're doing. But what what happened next? How did you grow? I left that band. And then for a while I had my own bands. I had the Kelly Hansen band. I had a band called The Last Tango.

Starting point is 00:18:28 And, you know, played around L.A. because L.A. was famous for all of the clubs where original bands, unsigned bands could play. And my father was my manager and we had a fan club where, oh man, I think back to how archaic this was. We had a fan club where we had people could sign up on a three by five card and they'd give us their name, their address and their telephone number. And then we compiled them on a list in handwriting or on the typewriter. And then whenever we had a show, we'd have to make the calls or send out a little flyer. So I used to stuff envelopes with flyers to send out to our fan club to say, we're going to be playing here or there. And some of those great people still go to shows that I perform at today. And that was 45 years ago.

Starting point is 00:19:34 So that's wild. And then I occasionally did sessions, started doing some session things. And if my memory doesn't fail me, I started playing in another cover band, a couple of them. And this is where I started to make regular money. We were a popular cover band called the Riz Kids. And we played all around Southern California and we would play five to six nights a week and we would play five hours a night. So that's 45 minutes with a 15 minute break every hour. And my voice would be trash at the end of the week, you know, for obvious reasons. And but that's where I was honing my skills as a

Starting point is 00:20:25 performer and trying to motivate people and to have a good time and have fun. And, and because that translated to management of the club or the owner saying, Hey, these guys are really good people up and going, and then they're going to have you back and pay you more the next time. So that was really, my focus was really try to find the signals from the audience or the environment or whatever it is to get people involved in the show and get going. That turned into a kind of a bag of tricks of sorts of things that I have at my disposal to, to motivate an audience. And, and that that was i wouldn't say many but several years of me doing that and i would sing everything from from summertime from porgy and bess to van

Starting point is 00:21:14 halen and um um so that was there was a lot of learning going on at the time. And that went all the way up into the hurricane years. So when you went through these bands and you started your own band, did you say, hey, I'm Kelly, I've got a good voice and look for people through word of mouth? Hey, are you a guitarist? We need a drummer. And then as you started playing in this cover band, did they find you? And how did it work? Well, I was friends with a guy named Ross Bolton, who was a great guitarist who's sadly passed. And he owned the store at a place called the Guitar Institute of Technology called GIT at the time. There are now been numerous iterations of that. But at the time, it was where a lot of guitar players would go. It was a school

Starting point is 00:22:09 in Hollywood where guitarists and bass players and drummers would go to learn music. And with that, they would be playing with each other in different setups. There was a recording studio there, and it kind of got you familiar with the musical entertainment ground. And so he played with me for a while, and I met other musicians through GIT and through various other sources, but no one was really coming to me. In fact, it was very difficult for me to have my own band because I just had to hire everybody to play. And when you're not making a lot of money, that's difficult to do because it wasn't a band. It was really me hiring a band. So you got to pay everybody. And that became one of the huge hurdles in doing that for me. So walk us through Hurricane, which before Foreigner was your big band and you had a lot of success and you had things crash very, very quickly. And I'd

Starting point is 00:23:14 love to talk about the impetus of the band, the rise of the band, and then you two thirds of the way through your tour and getting a call from your publicist with respect to two different album covers and then things just crashing immediately. Yeah. Um, I was playing in a cover band and, um, there was a music magazine. Oh, I forget what it was called in LA. I think it was, maybe it Music Connection magazine and which I later many years later was on the cover of. But I was looking through Music Connection magazine because that's where a musician or singer would would look for ads for musicians or singers, bands looking for singers or people looking for guitar players. And there was all sorts of associated musical advertisements for guitars and drums. And there were articles about the music business. And so if you were a musician starting out, that was what you would read. And I drummer was the one doing the doing the ad. So I responded to the ad. And I

Starting point is 00:24:30 remember I was living in a bungalow apartment in Burbank, a one bedroom bungalow. And I remember this drummer coming to my apartment. And we sat down and talked about you know what they were doing what i was doing and could we do something together i ended up uh he ended up having um tony cavazzo and uh robert sarzo who were brothers of the two guitar player and brother and a bass player of quiet riot and uh so tony and and Robert came down to my top 40 gig, where I'm sure I was wearing some sort of tights with leg warmers and leather capizios and a cutoff shirt. Who knows? So they came to the show and they liked what they saw. So we got together and we started out writing songs in an office that was closed at night, obviously, because it was an office. So during the day, regular office things were going on.

Starting point is 00:25:35 But Robert knew that either the office manager or somebody on the company or whatever it was. And they let us use one of the empty rooms at night to write songs. And we started moving forward with material and then um um we somehow got a manager i forget how that happened but um we ended up getting different rehearsal rooms um and uh we had some some investor money here there, people who kind of backed us a little bit. So we could have what they call a lockout. That's where we had, basically, you had this rehearsal room from when the doors open in the morning to when the doors closed at night. You could go in there any day or however many days a week you wanted to and rehearse. And so we rehearsed in a lockout across the parking lot from Sound City, which if you've seen Dave Grohl's documentary, you know about it.

Starting point is 00:26:33 And, and Goodnight LA, which was right next to Sound City. And so we were rehearsing there and we had to get rid of the original drummer. He wasn't working with us musically. So the manager had been working as a tour manager. I think it was for Lita Ford. And she had this drummer that he thought might be a good fit for us. So we decided to meet with this drummer. And so he comes to Sound City and he had a black 68 el camino with a big block 396 he had black drums he had black clothes he had black hair and his name was jay shellen

Starting point is 00:27:13 and so that's when this really became hurricane because we finally came together as a unit that worked musically together. And then we did some demos with a producer called Kevin Beamish, who did a lot of stuff with RU Speedwagon. And we had a contract that he was going to do some demos with us, and we had to agree on the mixes in order for him to get paid. And we didn't like the mixes. He literally said to me one day, no one listened to the drums anyway, because I was making a comment if I didn't like a certain drum sound. So we left the contract, but we still had the tracks. So we took the tracks around and mixed them ourselves uh and we took them around to all of the record labels my previous experience with record labels with my father trying to come concoct ingenious ways of getting record company anr men's attention. And A&R means artist and repertoire. You've had these

Starting point is 00:28:28 guys who did or didn't have legitimate knowledge of songs or music, but they had the job at the company to go out and find bands and talent and songs. So my dad would do these things like, I'm backtracking for a second here but he did this thing where um he made platinum record plaques with my name on it and the song or whatever and he's and he would say something like this could be your record labels next platinum album genius that's genius so he would he would send those out with the demo song you know the demo record labels next platinum album. Genius. That's genius. So he would, he would send those out with the demo song, you know, the demo tape.

Starting point is 00:29:16 But that was years before and it never really ended up in anything, but it did, it did end up getting me connected with a very, very good attorney. And so over the years, I was very, very judicious in my asking for help from the attorney. And he never charged me, but he would always give me good advice and connected me with some people too. This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by Sandy.com. S-A-N-D-E-E.com. We are a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000

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Starting point is 00:30:27 band. And we ended up signing a P&D deal, which was production and distribution. So it's not like we had a full record deal, but they would pay for the production of an album and they would distribute it through their pipeline. And um what we did was we we i think we remixed repackaged the ep and they distributed it for us and then we went on tour and we we i think we went on tour with the striper and on that on that ep then we came back into the studio to make our first record which was um which was what it was my first record with them called uh uh uh maybe you know i don't know um it wasn't called give me a second uh geez that's so stupid wow i'm having two total senior moment right now. Well, we made, we made our first record and, um, and we, and we went out on the road and we started

Starting point is 00:31:32 opening for other bands that were really great. We opened for cheap trick and Gary Moore and iron maiden. And our second record had our biggest single on it, which was Take What You Want. And then it came time to make our third record, which was Slave to the Thrill, with Michael James Jackson producing. And that took a year of our lives. We were doing shows. We had a lockout where we would go and we would write and there had a lounge which was a separate room so what would happen is that we'd go into the big room where the band was set up and we everyone would bring in their little pieces of ideas and chunks of ideas and we work on them and write them and we'd extend them and grow them into

Starting point is 00:32:22 song ideas and we did that for a year. And right in the middle of that, we had to let our original guitar player go. So then we got Doug Aldrich in the band and we continued working on the record and made the record. And the label was telling us, oh, you know, you guys are our priority. We're really going to make you guys, you know, the thing this year, and this is really going to happen for us and blah, blah, blah. So we're out on the road. And for the first time ever, we have a junkie, but real tour bus, which we're paying for out of advanced money from the label. So the label has given us money to tour on. But if the record starts to make any money, they get paid back before we

Starting point is 00:33:05 make any money. So we're living off advance money. And we also had to do a publishing advance. So we got advancements on our publishing too. So we're doing everything we can to have enough muscle to get out there on the road and play. And so that's what we're doing. And then, uh, as you read, uh, one day, um, I get a copy of a press release from, which was now Enigma records because Green World had folded into Enigma. There was a, a buy-in of like, uh, $20 million or whatever. And the two brothers that started the original label who were the genius, uh, minds behind the success of that green rule label. Um, one kind of parachuted his way out of that and was no longer the creative director of the, of the label. And the other one who was really in charge of the business end of

Starting point is 00:34:01 things, he was out too. So they hired just people to come in and start running the label, which was not really great. They ran it into the ground. I heard all kinds of stories of alleged misappropriations and other things that were not necessarily kosher. So we're on the road and we had, we had, we had come to the label before we released the album. We said, we have this famous album designer and he's done stuff for Rush and really great. And we have this idea for this cover, which was called for the album that was called Slave to the Thrill. Now, remember it was at a time, it was a different time. And the concept was this woman on this machine that was basically going to provide her with sexual gratification.

Starting point is 00:34:52 And it was very, who's the movie director that I'm thinking of? It's very mechanical, dark kind of look to it. So the label says, oh, my God, we love that idea. That's amazing. You know, and so at the time they paid us, they paid fourteen thousand dollars for this album cover, which at the time was a lot for a band of our stature. And so we did the photo shoot, which was basically a model of this machine that was photographed as a model. Then for the second half of the photo shoot, they take a photograph or a negative or whatever of that machine. And they had a device in which they could put it over the lens for a new photo shoot.

Starting point is 00:35:41 And they set up boxes and crates and had a model up on these boxes and crates to make it look as though she was on this machine in this reclining position. And so we did the photo shoot and it was, it's a, it's a, it's an amazing looking cover. And then I get this press release from the label while we're on the road promoting that record that the label was now going to release two versions of our album, one with the girl and one without the girl. And they didn't ask us or anything. But what they were afraid of is that the big box stores wouldn't order the album because they were afraid that it looked too sexual. And and I was like, well, that's good. That's controversy we want. That'll bring us notice. And because at the time we were trying to find, how can we find ways to get attention about this

Starting point is 00:36:37 band? And I remember we'd be on the road and we'd be sitting around the pool on a day off and we'd go, well, maybe one of us should get arrested for doing something. You know, we'd come up with these ideas of how we can get the band noticed. So I'm like, yeah, that's what we want. That's controversy. That'll make news articles. That'll bring attention to the record. People will buy it because people think it's bad or nasty. And, you know, kids love that. So that'd be great. Labels, well, you know, we're scared that they're not going to order the records. So we're going to offer them a version without the woman on it. So then essentially what you have is an album cover with a machine on it. You don't know what's happening. It says nothing. It's just this. They don't even know what it is.

Starting point is 00:37:17 So I was heavily miffed at that. And there was nothing I could do. And then further along down the road we're playing these shows on the road opening with all these bands in order to sell records then one day I talked to the publicist at that label she goes they fired two-thirds of the staff today two-thirds of the staff and I said to myself why are we even out here on the road? We're spending money every day and there's not going to be any records in the stores. In fact, we had experienced that we were going to in stores and they didn't have a record. So people coming to the store

Starting point is 00:37:56 couldn't buy our record when we were in the store signing stuff. So we had to cancel the rest of the tour and that, and for six months, we didn't know whether we were still on the rest of the tour and that. And for six months, we didn't know whether we were still on the label or not. We would get no response from the label with our inquiries. So we had to eventually send him a letter says, if you don't respond to this letter within X and X time frame, we are going to assume that we are no longer with the label. And now we're not making any money. We don't we're out of our advanced money and we're starting to have to like sell equipment and stuff to like, to pay rent and things like that. So,

Starting point is 00:38:30 um, you know, after a year of our lives, that's what happened. And it was kind of soul crushing. Um, and it, and it made me, it soured me for a long time about my involvement in the music business. Let's talk about being soured and how we motivate ourselves. And we'll talk about Foreigner in just a minute. But there was a period where you were not in a band and you were doing different things. So tell us what you were doing and what motivated you to stay in the music business at that point. And what were you thinking? Where was your head in terms of your future?

Starting point is 00:39:10 Right. Well, concurrent with the label going under and us not having a record deal, there was a new style of music that was coming in in the early 90s that was more kind of earthy and I'm not going to just nail it down as grunge, but there was a paradigm shift in popular music and metal was no longer the favored thing. And a high, clean tenor rock voice was not the thing. And I saw this and recognized this and I said, I have two choices. My clean tenor rock voice was not the thing. And I saw this and recognized this. And I said, I have two choices. I can just change my style and do something that's not me and just pretend. Or I said, music is cyclical and there will be a place for my voice again.

Starting point is 00:40:02 I just have to ride this out. So what I decided to do was tackle the other aspects of the recording business that I loved or the music business that I loved, the recording studio. So I it was at the very beginning of home studio technology. And I had been in the studio every day during the making of our albums, and I observed and I learned and I watched because it fascinated me. So I kind of had some chops to start into that, in that realm. So I started doing engineering, producing, artist development, and I worked with one producer where he would record all the music, and I would record all the singing of whatever the singer was. And I would sing backgrounds and then I would turn around and I'd give him all the vocals back and he'd lay them into his mix. And so that was our kind of team setup.

Starting point is 00:40:58 And so that was a great learning experience, having to produce vocals. I mean, solely producing vocals. And you learn a huge amount about what's important sonically and how you do stuff. And it's a myriad of things. So I did that for a long time. But then as technology grew, more and more people were able to not have to go to a multimillion dollar studio to make a record. People could do it in their house or in the garage. And when that happens, people who want to break into that start offering their services for less money to the people that you've already been doing work for. They go, oh, really?

Starting point is 00:41:43 That's what he wants? I'll do it for this. So now the amount of money that starts to being offered for album production starts to slowly sink down as technology advances and everyone can get gear in their house. So it was becoming an issue of diminishing returns that you would work harder. There were more demands on you, but you were making less and less money. And that became very problematic for me. It was starting to get really hard around the end of the 90s. And finally, one day I said to myself, you know what, I need, maybe I need to go back what I do best. And that's being the lead singer. So I had a discussion with myself. I said, okay, you're going to start saying yes until you can't say yes anymore. You're not going to turn anything down that

Starting point is 00:42:31 you have the ability or the time to do. And everything will be an offshoot of a tree that's growing all in the same direction. That's how I pictured it in my mind. So I started researching and looking for things. And one of the main reasons I did this is because all my life, all my career, gigs just happened to fall in my lap. And I didn't have to even look for them. But now, at the end of the 90s, I started hearing about, well, there was this gig and I didn't even get a phone call for it. Like I would have been perfect for that and no one even thought of me And believe me it took me years After singing in hurricane for anyone to allow me to sing anything other than metal

Starting point is 00:43:15 Um, they thought they pigeonholed me as a metal singer and that's all I was so it took me years to come out Of that and I started I started getting out of it by doing backgrounds for other type of music. I would do an R&B background or a pop background vocal or whatever. And it started to slowly work its way into me being allowed to sing again and knowing that I'm not just a metal singer. So I started looking and researching. And I, you know, very beginning of my computer time. Well, my computer thing started in 93 ish or something. And then the internet was really, really slow. And I had AOL. And if, for those of you who don't remember, you would sign on, it would make that noise.

Starting point is 00:43:59 And then you'd have to watch an ad load one line at a time, the picture of this ad that would come on the screen. And then finally, once the ad had loaded and they see that you saw it, then you could go to your email or you could go to your browser or whatever. It was unbelievably bad. And I heard about, and this was in 2004 drums along with Tom Gimbel, who had been in the band a while as well, uh, and Mick. And, um, so Jason had been in a movie called Rockstar with Mark Wahlberg. And so they worked together on that movie. And Jason was the person, one of the people who came to Mick and said, Mick, you have to do something. You can't just not play these songs anymore. The world has to hear, keep hearing these songs kind of. And Mick had been, you know, reconnecting with his family and kind of, you know,

Starting point is 00:45:22 figure out things in his life. And it had just been dormant and he didn't know what he was going to do. So that, that kind of, uh, encouragement from different people, um, helped him make the decision to start looking for a voice for the band. So, um, I knew Jeff Pilsen. I had been to a couple of his parties in the eighties and we weren't close or anything, but we knew each other. And, uh, uh, but I also, a friend, a friend, a friend of a friend knew Tom Gimbel. So, um, I set up this meet with Tom Gimbel, um, and we got together and I gave him some music that I'd been on and most of it in the lead vocal form was kind of rocker hard rocker metal stuff and that's all I had at the time so he took the stuff and come to find out later that it was foreigner Forerunner was trying to, you know, gear up again.

Starting point is 00:46:25 And it takes a while for a machine of that size to fire up again, you know, get all the gears greased and get moving. And Mick was looking for a voice. And I, you know, I found out he was looking all over the world for a voice. And, but I started to have this back and forth conversation with management. So what they ended up doing was they sent me five foreigner tracks for five hits of the band, the original recordings, but without any vocals. So someone had taken the 24 tracks from the original band tapes. Maybe they'd been converted to digital and they kind of just brought up the, the tracks on a, on a mix and sent them to me to put my voice on, which was fascinating for me as a producer, because I got to hear things on that tape that I never heard in the

Starting point is 00:47:16 much played for decades, um, radio releases. You just heard things different because they wasn't the same mix. I could hear the guitar doing something or that or the keyboards doing something that I hadn't heard before. So that was fascinating. But I spent the next three days diligently recording and putting my voice on there and really trying to go, hey, look at me, I can sing it different. Because I, whenever I went to concerts, I always loved hearing the melody, the way I learned to love the song. And a quality song has a quality melody and quality lyrics, and it's popular for a reason. So it's not my job to prove how different I am. It's my job to serve the song. So that's what I did. And Mick Jones got to hear that CD in New York and they were coming out to LA to do some rehearsal for I don't know what. Maybe they were going to listen to other people. That's the only thing I could assume. So I talked to management and I said, can I be the first person that jams with

Starting point is 00:48:26 the guys? So there's a little lesson right there. Be the first one in because as soon as they find who they like, they stop looking. And if you're a fifth person in, they're never even going to know you. So, but that was my little get in there early because if they like me, you know. So I went in and I had all these lyric sheets with me and I was very serious. And my hair was much shorter at the time because I would decide to be taken really seriously. And, um, we jammed for about an hour and a half. And unbeknownst to me, uh, the sound mixer was recording the rehearsal. And during the breaks, Mick was going in the hallway and listening to the mixes.

Starting point is 00:49:07 So he could hear them very clearly, you know. So I left. And I remember distinctly getting home at 6 p.m. And later found out that in that time, they were having a roundtable discussion amongst everyone in the band and with common friends like Ricky Phillips, who plays with sticks, was a guy I had known and worked with a bunch of times during that producing engineering segment of my career. And he he really gave me a good review. So that was really nice. So they wanted to find out if I was weird or I was an idiot or what. And so I remember distinctly, I got a call one hour after I got home and they said, we have shows, um, we're booking shows for this weekend. Can you start rehearsing tomorrow?

Starting point is 00:49:56 And that's how I got in the band. I had five days to learn. That's a, that's an incredible story and then we're going to go how you did 170 shows that year in a minute but we did only did 75 shows that first year but we started in march and you only had five days to to warm up usually you take months to warm up for a tour, right? You're rehearsing and, uh, yeah, I mean, it wasn't easy because, um, everyone thinks they know a song in the shower until you have to sing every first word of every single line of that song. All of a sudden it's like, Oh, uh, that's real now. I don't, I don't know the song. And so I had, I printed out lyrics. They were in my car. They were in my bed. They were

Starting point is 00:50:48 on my couch. They were in my hand. And I, 24 seven, I was just memorizing the songs and it, and it took several shows quite a while. Cause I would, I'd be on stage and all of a sudden I'd have a blank, like what the fuck, what's the next thing? Because I didn't want to use teleprompters or cheat sheets. I thought that was lame. So I said, I have to learn how to do this myself. And if I ever start using a teleprompter, that's it. I will not do that. What would you do when you didn't know the words to a song up on stage? It's hard to fake it. When you're in the the shower you can fake it all you want right i remember i remember once turning my head to the side of the stage and one of the gals that works for management her name is mary hart i looked at her and i said what's the next line and she goes i

Starting point is 00:51:36 don't know so so sometimes you know tom gimble was really good um because i could look to my left and tom would mouth the words to me you know and, and I would go, OK, and then I'd be back on track again. So, yeah, and then, you know, I'm getting my stage myself with that bag of tools that I mentioned earlier, and learning how to work the show and make the show the ebb and flow that it needs to be to be a complete show. So that took a while. And it was a daunting time. And, you know, the band was at a fairly low ebb popularity wise, too. So we had to fight that along with having a new singer in the band. I like doing a lot of depth and research on my guests. It's very important to me. And I love learning a lot about my guests. I over prepare.

Starting point is 00:52:35 It's been the hallmark. And a lot of my guests have said, wow, you know, they've been pointing and said, wow, how'd you know that? And it's fun for me to get those comments. Right. Well, I, everything you brought up is, I remember saying at one point or said, wow, how'd you know that? And it's fun for me to get those comments. Right. Well, everything you brought up is, I remember saying at one point or another, so there's nothing that you dug up that I didn't know about was out there. But I don't often get asked about that stuff. But I've also had people interview them and they say, well, when you join the Foreigners, that's how much research they've done. Right. You're listening to part one of my amazing interview with Kelly Hanson, the lead singer of the legendary rock band foreigner,

Starting point is 00:53:09 which has sold more than 80 million albums. And those hits include jukebox hero hot blooded and feels like the first time. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible interview with Kelly. you

In Search Of Excellence - Kelly Hansen: The Bumpy Road Of Musical Beginnings | E73

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